The Hidden War

Antipersonnel mines - some statistics

Landmines will continue to be used by the million, produced by the million, and transferred by the million. Thousands of children will continue to suffer horrific mutilation. Thousands of farmers working in the fields will be blinded or crippled. Thousands of de-miners will continue to have to risk their lives every day to try to clear the world of the 110 million landmines that already lie uncleared
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Former Secretary-General of the United Nations.

The military use of land-mines has been common for many years. Formerly, their use was intended to be ‘responsible’ and ‘ethical’, in that mines were laid individually by hand, minefields were mapped, used solely or mainly for military advantage and, at the end of hostilities, could be cleared to avoid harm to the returning civilian population. Mines were made of metal and thus identifiable by metal-detectors. However, the degree of effort put into mine clearing after the cessation of hostilities has varied greatly. After the end of World War II, Poland, the most heavily mined country in Europe with 80% of its area covered, received massive efforts at clearing, but still, after 50 years, needs to employ a permanent staff of 300 disposal experts. By contrast, North Africa received little or no help after 1945 and in Libya 30-40 people still die each year from mine explosions.

Bad though this situation is, it has changed radically for the worse over the past few decades.

The present situation

Guerrilla wars, insurrections and terrorism have spread throughout the world and ‘conventional’ wars have become increasingly mobile. Pioneered by the Unites States in Viet Nam, there has been a massive increase in the use of anti-personnel mines, ostensibly to combat the enemy, but often deliberately targeted at civilians suspected of aiding the enemy, driving them from their land and preventing them from returning to their farms. Whole areas have been rendered uninhabitable. It is estimated that during the past decade in conflicts in 60 countries, over 119 million mines have been laid. Afghanistan and Cambodia are the most heavily contaminated countries and Africa the most polluted continent, Mozambique and Angola prominent among its 18 afflicted countries. In the former Yugoslavia, at least 3 million mines have been laid since 1989 without markers or mapping.

When warfare dies away, the one desire of the indigenous population, often starving and fearful for the future, is to return to their homes. Their survival depends on their ability to restore their fields promptly to productivity, but this aim has been cynically frustrated by retreating armies. The land has been thickly sown with mines, often indiscriminately by aircraft or artillery. Anti-personnel mines may remain active for years and are small, inconspicuous and unnoticeable in terrain which, during the farmers’ absence, has become neglected and overgrown.

Types of mines

The commonest types of anti-personnel mines are those which explode by being trodden on or displaced. With the power of modern explosives, they can be small enough to lie unseen. If made mainly of plastic, they can be missed by metal detectors. They are often made to look innocent, like the Italian Valsella SB-33 which is shaped and coloured like a stone. Some manufacturers advertise mines with a metal insert to facilitate detection, but most purchasers do not take this option. Since they are usually dispersed widely and remotely from either an aircraft, mortar or missile, their distribution is random. An example is the British-made HB876 mine, packed into a 6 ft. cylinder which is dropped from the Tornado fighter aircraft. On impact with the ground, the bomblets scatter widely. If triggered by an enemy or civilian, armour-piercing fragments burst out. The promotional literature boasts one of its roles as ‘disabling soft-skinned targets, including personnel’. Many modern mines are designed to be blast-resistant to prevent deliberate detonation, have double-impulse fuses or influence fuses to counter rollers or scoops, all with the aim of making mine clearance more difficult and dangerous.

As a response to international revulsion at the carnage they are causing innocent civilians, manufacturers have designed ‘smart’ mines with a limited life, ended after a predetermined time (which may range from hours to years) either by self-destruction or by self-neutralising. Unfortunately, the effect this might have on limiting civilian casualties is greatly diminished by the fact that the failure rate is at least 10%, which would leave many thousands of mines still active. Also, self-neutralisation does not free the terrain, since there is no way of telling by its aspect whether or not a mine is still active.

More sophisticated are mines activated by a trip-wire or those used for booby traps which are set off by disturbance. Since they must be carefully placed and hidden individually, these mines cannot be scattered randomly. The Italian Valmara 69 bounding mine, when detonated, leaps into the air and explodes, scattering shrapnel at chest height.

Though anti-tank mines ought not to be a threat to individuals since they should not explode under the weight of a man, they have sometimes been modified to act as anti-personnel mines when fitted either with a variable pressure trigger or with an anti-disturbance device which causes the mine to detonate as soon as it is moved. In Nicaragua, during the Contra insurgency, most mine injuries were caused by anti-tank mines exploding under crowded civilian buses and lorries. 

In response to pressure by human rights groups, some governments have embargoed the sale of mines to certain countries such as Iraq. Unfortunately, manufacturers often avoid these restrictions by licensing manufacture in third countries - for example, Italian manufacturers licensing the manufacture of their devices in Singapore. Alternatively, mines can be exported to a neutral country and then reshipped to the forbidden destination. Or the manufacturer can confine himself to exporting certain components. For instance, some UK manufacturers supply only the fusing component, the most sophisticated part of a mine, leaving local industries to make the explosive portion and assemble the mine.

The manufacturers

In Europe, 28 companies have been identified as manufacturing mines, while 15 companies have been implicated in the United States. 22 others are known to produce them in other countries including Canada and Japan. Among the most active manufacturers have been three Italian firms whose products accounted for most of the mines recovered in Kurdistan in the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq war - Valsella of Brescia (50% owned by the Fiat Group), BFD Difesa e Spazio of Rome and Tecnovar of Bari. In the United Kingdom, Royal Ordinance, Ferranti and Hunting Engineering have been prominent. Their determination to ensure the future of mines has led them to unite in a development project codenamed MINX (Mines into the Next Century).

There is good evidence that the initiatives for the design, development and manufacture of new types of mine and ideas for their use lie with the arms trade rather than military strategists. Manufacturers vie with each other to develop new mines and delivery systems which will out-perform those of rivals.

The traders and the users

The trade in anti-personnel mines is a profitable business. Though individually cheap, they are sold in such vast numbers that traders have every inducement to maximise their distribution. Accordingly, traders are constantly devising new ways of escaping restrictions imposed by governments attempting to limit their use. For instance, when a country prohibits their sale or transfer, ‘third country’ trafficking is employed by using agents in neutral countries. Efforts are being made to bypass restrictions on the arms trade by misleadingly reclassifying anti-personnel mines as ‘sub-munitions’, thus exempting them from controls.

Military experts consider the legitimate function of anti-personnel mines, together with anti-tank devices, to be mainly to protect the perimeter of airfields and other strategic areas in a war zone, to channel or divert the enemy forces or to deny routes and strategic positions to the enemy. These conventional uses should allow the mapping, recording and marking of mine fields. Indeed, in these circumstances, a significant deterrent effect can be gained by the use of dummy minefields in which areas are marked but no mines laid. Traditional minefields are capable of being cleared at the end of hostilities and their destructive effect more or less limited to the original military aim. It is in the interest of the force laying the mines that the minefield should be mapped in case the territory is later recaptured.

However, the modern development is of devices, used generally against guerrillas, insurgents or ‘terrorists’, which are much smaller, cheaper and undetectable; they can be scattered indiscriminately. Their purpose is to deny an area to the local population as well as the guerrillas, starving out the enemy and spreading terror among civilians. This new use of mines has become accepted as ‘normal military strategy’. It was employed by the US forces in South East Asia and the Soviet forces in Afghanistan to render whole regions uninhabitable. As a reaction against this strategy there is debate among the military as to the morality as well as the need for these weapons - the concept of ‘proportionality’ - and several NATO generals have stated that, in view of their devastating side-effects on civilian populations, they would be happy to see the use of mines totally outlawed. 

Those military commanders whose interest is purely short-term and who order the indiscriminate laying of mines are cynically neglectful of the devastation they are sowing for the future.

The medical consequences

Modern anti-personnel mines are designed to inflict the maximum damage on the victim. The military and economic damage is greater if the victim survives to use up medical and social resources than if he is killed outright. Mines may be detonated by disturbance or by the weight of a child, in which case an arm or a leg is torn to pieces. Dirt and fragments are forced into the wound. Metallic shrapnel can be detected by x-ray, but plastic fragments cannot. The legacy, if the victim survives, is heavy contamination which requires expert surgery, often with multiple operations, to cleanse the wound, allow it to heal and provide a satisfactory stump capable of taking an artificial limb. The trigger may be a tripwire which sets off a ring of mines which jump off the ground before exploding to fill the air with shrapnel. This causes massive damage to the victim’s torso, and the usual result is death.  The countries with this appalling burden of surgical demand are usually those with the poorest resources of health care which are diverted away from their primary purpose of caring for the regular needs of the population. It is no use attempting to provide sophisticated artificial limbs for peasant victims. They are far too expensive for a poor country to provide on a large scale. Besides, in the case of children, growth has to be taken into consideration. Until a child is fully grown, a series of appliances is needed to cope with growth. It has been estimated that a 10-year-old child with a life expectancy of 40 years may need 25 prostheses in his lifetime. Much research has been and is being done on simple, cheap prostheses which can be made locally by village craftsmen using the most basic tools and materials. It is important to remember that limbs designed in the West are not suitable for use in countries where squatting, not sitting, is traditional. The aim must be to restore the victim to sufficient mobility to make him or her economically self-supporting.

The social cost

Most countries with a mine legacy have been devastated by war and their economic base completely destroyed. Agricultural output is essential for recovery, but this is the very thing that has become impossible. In many countries the majority of agricultural land will remain unusable for many decades. The added burden of having to provide emergency services to rescue mine casualties before they die of blood-loss, shock or infection, surgical skill to perform amputations, and aftercare with physiotherapy and provision of artificial limbs, and the loss of able-bodied adults to till the land would be serious in the richest countries. In these poverty-stricken parts of the world, desperately trying to recover from years of warfare, the effect is devastating. Without training, the local people are not able to clear the land. It is a skilled and dangerous job and the magnitude of the task is daunting. Reclaiming just one acre of farm or grazing land can take months. Restriction of movement round the countryside places a heavy burden on the people. In Somalia, mothers chain their children to trees to prevent them from straying into dangerous areas.

Clearing up the mess

The legacy of mines in many countries is so huge that it often seems hopeless even to attempt clearance. No aggressor has ever taken a responsible attitude to clearing up. The devastation sown by the United States in Viet Nam, Cambodia and Laos remains largely untouched.

Design of new models of anti-personnel mines has far outstripped methods of clearance. Since metal detectors are useless, it is usually necessary to resort to the primitive technique of combing the ground inch by inch and clearing the undergrowth twig by twig. The work is uniquely slow and dangerous - the average is for one disposal expert killed and two injured for every 5,000 mines neutralised. A number of fresh ideas are being tried. Dogs trained to detect the scent of explosives have been found very effective, except in areas where mines are lying so thickly that the dog’s sense of smell gets overwhelmed. In flat open country, rocket-propelled lines can be thrown across an area to set off mines lying on the surface. Various armour-clad vehicles, such as the Aardvark Flail, have been designed to roll over or scoop up the ground. A number of national and international non-profit organisations such as the Mines Advisory Group and the Halo Trust of the UK and the Norwegian People’s Trust have taken on the task of mine clearing in countries where the tide of battle has rolled away, such as Viet Nam, Somalia, Mozambique, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Bosnia, Angola, Iraq and Laos - the last being the world’s most heavily mined country, thanks to the activities of the US Air Force between 1964 and 1973. Imported experts first have to assess and commence the work in key areas, while at the same time training local personnel to carry on.

The legal situation

The 1981 United Nations Inhumane Weapons Convention bans the use of devices scattering plastic or other non-detectable fragments and also remotely distributed and unmapped mines. These prohibitions are routinely ignored, partly because they include generous opt-outs.

A 1982 Resolution by the General Assembly of the United Nations stated that responsibility for removing landmines and other remnants of war rested with the countries which planted them, but it has had little effect. The implication is that victims could claim reparation, but, unfortunately, there are no means of enforcement. Attempts by individual victims of mine explosions to obtain legal redress from the manufacturer, the trader or the military force responsible for laying the mines, have so far been unsuccessful. The case of Tugar v. Italy, an Iraqi mine-clearer injured by a mine of Italian manufacture laid by the Iraqis, was declared inadmissible by the European Commission of Human Rights. It seems likely that groups of victims such as the Landmine Survivors’ Network, would have more success. They are at present pursuing legal action. Pressure by groups to force national and international legislation to outlaw landmines is the most promising course and there are some encouraging signs of increasing awareness of the problem at the grassroots. In many countries there is intensive lobbying by human rights groups. Campaigning in Italy led, in 1991, to the conviction of senior executives of Valsella for exporting at least 9 million mines during the Iran-Iraq war despite an official embargo. That company now appears to confine itself to manufacturing anti-tank mines. A bill presently going through the Italian Parliament seeks acceptance of a text which would greatly strengthen the law. The UK, which, under a Conservative government, was reluctant to outlaw anti-personnel mines, and refused to ratify the revised Protocol of the 1981 UN Inhumane Weapons Convention, is taking a much stronger stance under its newly-elected Labour government which has already announced that it will ban all manufacture, export and stockpiling of all types, including ‘smart’ mines. It is to be hoped that this will give a lead to other manufacturing nations.

The only way to stop world-wide use of anti-personnel mines would be a strongly worded international treaty outlawing their manufacture, transfer and use, and enforcing the destruction of world-wide stockpiles. To be effective, it would need to be signed by all countries with a manufacturing base and large stocks, especially China, Iraq, Italy, Russia, the United Kingdom and the USA, and to have powers of policing. The Review Conference of the States Parties to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons has had three meetings on landmines in Geneva. In May 1996, it signed Protocol II which is, unhappily, a very watered-down compromise with limited restrictions on the use of landmines, but nothing that will reduce their continued widespread distribution in the near future. The review failed to prohibit the use of any single type of mine, maintaining that they are an integral element of warfare. The next meeting is not due until the year 2001. Not content to wait so long, Canada, in October 1996, convened a meeting of ‘like-minded nations’. Follow-up meetings have put together a draft treaty forbidding manufacture and transfer of all classes of mines. This, the ‘Ottawa Process’, is expected to be signed by up to 50 countries in December, 1997. Failure to obtain the signatures of some of the most involved countries will probably limit its effectiveness.

Of all modern weapons, anti-personnel mines have caused by far the most devastation and human suffering. The need for action to stamp out the manufacture, trade and deployment of anti-personnel mines is one of the most urgent matters on the international human rights agenda. But it is first necessary to raise awareness in the developed world of the devastation which is taking place, largely in the poorer countries. Much is being done by organisations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross and Physicians for Human Rights. A complete embargo is the main requirement but it would not solve the problem, only prevent it from getting worse. If no more mines were to be laid there would still remain a huge legacy of contaminated land. Even with massive and heroic efforts at mine clearing in many countries, anti-personnel mines will continue to wreak havoc. It will take many generations before the last remaining mine explodes.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to Rae and Lou McGrath of the Mines Advisory Group, UK, to Ian Doucet of Medical Educational Trust, UK, to Tim Carstairs of the UK Working Group on Landmines, UK, to Françoise Hampson, Reader in Law, University of Essex and to Nicoletta Dentico of Mani Tesi, Italy for providing much of the factual material in this article.